T-Mobile Moving On From AT&T Affair, Now Wooing MetroPCS

Almost a year after the FCC and DOJ came running up the aisle of the AT&T/T-Mobile wedding, offering up numerous reasons why the couple should not be wed, T-Mobile is already updating its OKcupid profile and going out on coffee dates with a younger, less-experienced beau: MetroPCS.

The Wall Street Journal reports that T-Mobile USA is actually being pushed onto the dating scene again by its Teutonic parents at Deutsche Telekom, who really just want to see its American offspring in a happy marriage with maybe a few kids.

Both parties have confirmed they are chatting, exchanging texts and flirting, all while remaining coolly noncommittal about the whole thing (while secretly we know they both go back to the boardroom and carve potential married names into the big table).

Even with MetroPCS’ 9.3 million customers, T-Mobile would still be the fourth-largest wireless company in the U.S. While it makes much of its unlimited data plans, the company didn’t really do much about building out a 4G LTE network because there was already one being built for the house it intended to share with AT&T.

MetroPCS may be smaller and scrappier than the Death Star (so was Luke Skywalker) but it does have an LTE network in some major cities. So it’s like T-Mobile has gone from dating a Hollywood superstar to dating the drummer for a band that all the kids are talking about.

Regulators and consumer advocates have frowned about marriages in the wireless world, following a decade of rampant “I do”s that resulted in four companies controlling the lion’s share of the industry. However, if a marriage to MetroPCS is required to keep T-Mobile as a viable low-cost option for consumers, this one could get the blessings it needs.